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The evil that is Fa$ebook

Once his glibness, Mark Zuckerberg, and his crew of scurvy data pirates get their hooks into you, you’ve had it. There’s literally no escape becauseFa$ebook is STILL like Herpes: [it never goes away]!

That was the headline to a recent Dammit post in which I complained about Fa$ebook’s relentless pursuit and harassment.

You see, I’m not one of those people suffering under the delusion that life depends on FaSebook, and when I got up this morning, it was the last thing on my mind.

I booted my computer, as I usually do, and checked my email, also as I usually do, and there was little something from (you guessed it) saying,

“You haven’t been on Facebook for a few days, and a lot happened while you were away.”

I was away because many moons ago, I saw the light and with some difficulty, dumped my Fa$ebook account,

Meanwhile, as Jolie O’Dell put it in Mashable, “one out of every 13 Earthlings and three out of four Americans is on Facebook, and one out of 26 signs into Facebook on a daily basis.”

Privacy and data aggregation

“The issue of online privacy and data aggregation has become a hot topic—finally—in the wake of the Facebook IPO. Max Schrems,” writes Steve Klingman in Salon.

He continues: “Facebook, it seems, has a privacy issue. Enfant-CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently instructed the investment banks handling its IPO to shut their faces when it comes to news leaks about the company. Turns out juicy details leaked all over the web can make a corporate person feel compromised. After all, who wants one’s past indiscretions out there for all to see?

“The issue of online privacy and data aggregation has become a hot topic—finally—in the wake of the Facebook IPO. Max Schrems, 24, the Austrian law student who sued Facebook for its complete record of his personal data was recently astounded to receive 1,222 pages of information.

“Some of it made sense—old Wall postings and photos—but some of it was material he had never even entered into Facebook. His action spurred more than 40,000 requests for Facebook data in Europe.”

Fa$ebook’s “astounding net worth amounts to about $130” each for each of its 845 million subscribers, Klingman assures us, continuing:

“Do you think they earn this by those pop-up ads that nobody clicks on?

“Research (and investment bank leaks) show that the click rates on those Facebook ads are infinitesimal. That leaves data aggregation revenue from third party advertisers and other users.

“And what kind of users are out there?

The “IRS is using online profiles against taxpayers under investigation. Let’s say your son or daughter posted some really great photos of a recent vacation to Rio for the whole family, just months after you filed your 1040 showing gargantuan business losses that included some hefty business expenses in Rio.

“Yes, people do. And the IRS finds them this way.

I’m in Canada so I don’t have to worry about the IRS, but presumably, Revenue Canada is equally keen on scanning for perceived miscreants.